Bleach and various other cleaning chemicals (including some acidic vacuum line enzymatic cleaners) are NOT your vacuum system’s friend. It amazes me how much damage can be done by the wrong types of cleaners. To give you just a little taste of what I’m talking about, here is a picture of a brass fitting on a wet-ring vacuum pump. Keep in mind that this fitting is made of solid brass and has a nominal wall thickness of about 3/8″.
As you can see from the picture, there is a gaping hole where solid metal used to be. The really tragic problem with this is that bad cleaners adversely affect the entire vacuum system, including any copper vacuum lines, pump fittings, pump impellers and housings, and even any amalgam separators that are inline. So once a problem like this is noticed, plenty of damage has had a chance to occur.
To avoid this problem in your office we recommend that absolutely NO bleach be allowed to be run down your vacuum lines, and we also recommend that you try to use vacuum line cleaners that have a fairly neutral pH. We have a chart of acceptable cleaners listed right here: